Clean up climate change? It’s just good for business. – The Washington Post

If the world’s largest companies live up to the promises they’ve made to slow climate change, together they could reduce emissions by an amount equal to those of Germany.

The corporate pledges gained new attention this week after an ominous report was issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said that government policies alone won’t ensure the “unprecedented” societal changes needed over the next decade to stem climate change.That puts the onus on the business sector to clean up a mess it helped create….

Historically, corporations have been complicit in the world’s climate problem. One analysis shows that half of the globe’s emissions since 1988 are traceable to just 25 private and state-owned fossil fuel corporations. And many have lobbied against policies that would limit the emission of greenhouse gases. They have done so both directly and through support of groups that have cast doubt on the idea of climate change.

Recently, however, there has been a palpable change in the way business leaders talk about climate change.

“Some of my investors and banks asked me what do you want to do: Improve the world or make money? I said, ‘Well, both,’ ” [Feike] Sijbesma [chief executive of the Dutch multinational company Royal DSM] said.